The arrival of the United Nations Security Council delegation in Bunia last week had a distinctly Gilbert and Sullivan touch.
The international journalists at their tent-town at the UN peacekeeping force (Monuc) headquarters, from where they have been covering the latest ethnic conflict in this eastern town of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) this past fortnight, might be forgiven for having cracked a smile.
We obviously looked comical in our pristine, sky-blue helmets and flak jackets that were mentioned in every dispatch I read.
The visit was obviously no joking matter for the ambassadors of the 15 Security Council members.
They had come to show support for the multinational force that will hold the ring in Bunia until September when a more robust Monuc should be able to do the job.
They pointedly spent the bulk of their brief stay in the town consulting with the local authority set up by the Ituri Pacification Committee.
This was designed to snub the Hema militia who hold the town and the Lendu militia contesting it.
The French commander of the multinational force, General Jean-Paul Thonier, obliged us to sport the high security apparel. He was pretty new to the Bunia game. At that point he had only enough of the projected 1 700-strong force to patrol the airfield that is the only access to the region.
A demonstration of about 500 people was being staged in the town and some armed militia had been spotted. The militia, some barely into their teens, were dotted among the crowd watching the procession of white, UN-marked vehicles accompanied by armoured personnel carriers.
Despite the brevity of the visit — we were effectively there over lunch, although we thoughtfully scoffed our own lunch packs on the plane — the experience impacted on the envoys.
The ambassadors of the five permanent council members — Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States — and the 10 non-permanent members — Angola, Bulgaria, Cameroun, Chile, Germany, Guinea, Mexico, Pakistan, Spain and Syria — will vote at the end of this month on renewing Monuc’s mandate.
Currently costing the world organisation $700-million a year, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has recommended that the force be beefed up from 8 500 to 10 700.
In Luanda, the second stop on their seven-nation tour, ambassadors told me renewal of the mandate was a given. There was doubt, however, about whether they would shell out the big bucks for one concerted effort to fix the problem.
Bunia appears to have changed that. ”We have a personal relationship with the people of Bunia,” one ambassador said. ”Before it was just another trouble spot. The next time we deal with the DRC it will be a different thing.”
Claims that the UN, like other international organisations, marginalised Africa were met with a reminder from envoys that the bulk of the council’s time is spent on Africa. This figure ranged from two-thirds to four-fifths depending on which ambassador was talking.
The next stop after Bunia illustrated again that diplomats will be diplomats.
In their crisp, white shirts they enjoyed breakfast on the terrace of a Bujumbura hotel oblivious to the crump of mortar fire from the hills surrounding the city.
”Mortars? Really?” said one ambassador, wondering if it would have been bad form to have brought a bag of clubs to tackle the adjoining golf course.
The shelling, which killed six people while the ambassadors were visiting, came from the Forces for the Defence of Democracy and the Forces for National Liberation rebels whose leaders were on the envoys’ programme two stops away in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Rwandan President Paul Kagame clearly saw the ambassadors coming.
The council members were hoisted on their own petard of politeness. They came to Rwanda, effectively to ask him to stop supporting the Rassemblement Congolais pour la Democratie (RCD-Goma), which is fuelling the fighting in Bunia and other parts of eastern DRC.
They also had a request from the DRC government to urge him to remove Rwandan forces that had trickled back into the DRC since their official withdrawal last year.
Hardman Kagame noted that the council had never actually accused Rwanda on either count. He urged them to fix their verification mechanisms, which would stop what he called rumour-mongering by the DRC to cover its inability to get a transitional government off the ground.
Kagame had pulled his troops out in terms of the Pretoria Accord signed last July, but he was still waiting for delivery on the other part of this agreement. It promised that fugitives of ex-FAR — the former Rwandan army — and interahamwe responsible for the 1974 genocide in Rwanda would be disarmed, rounded up and returned to Rwanda.
Of the RCD-Goma he said: ”Thank God they are there. If they were not fighting the Rwandan genocidiares hiding in Congo, we would have to.”
This weekend the Security Council members are heading on their West Africa trip, which was postponed last month because they had to deal with post-war Iraq.